ImPossibilities
by phantomlistener
Summary: Post-School Reunion, a familiar TARDIS lands in Sarah Jane's garden and together, she and her Doctor embark on yet another adventure.  But what is going on beneath the surface of Victorian London, and how will it affect their reunion?
1. Return

She thought the house was too big.

It was lonely, all by herself in a house where the rooms seemed crammed in to the available space like sardines in a tin. It made her feel old. Oh, she had things to do, articles to write, aliens to catch...life went on as normal. As normal as it ever was. But somewhere in the back of her mind was a constant whisper, cruel and demoralising. "What are you doing?" it would ask her as she tried to sleep. "What kind of a life is this?"

She had no answer.

She did the best she could, muddled through as well as could be expected, hated herself for every mistake, and every now and then sat down and thought of what she could have been.

A mother.

A wife.

A _person_.

Sometimes she was so fed up of being 'Sarah Jane Smith, Saviour of the World' that she was glad she lived alone: that way no-one could hear her crying at night.

And then he came back.

For the second time, or rather the first: it was like that with a time-traveller, because this time it was her Doctor, the one she knew best. The one she'd loved.

It was dark and cold, the familiar stars of the Milky Way blotted out here and there by clouds. Quiet for once. One of those nights when she wished there was someone to talk to - the latest trouble had been difficult, near-impossible, and all she wanted was for the nightmares to go away.

Then she heard it.

At first she thought she was dreaming, but as she stared, shivering, something began to materialise in the corner of her garden. A blue box, lights flashing, settled comfortably in to existence on her lawn.

The doors opened.

"Hello Sarah," came a voice - such a familiar, welcome voice that she almost cried - and he stepped out with a grin, scarf trailing on the ground just like it always had. "How long have I been?"

Stumbling in to his arms, she wondered if just this once the Universe had heard her prayers.

Twenty minutes later and he was still talking: "So after I left you I went to Gallifrey. A load of pompous bores, Timelords, you know. I was glad to get away...and then there were a few minor catastophes to sort out, a few worlds to save, and here I am!" He stopped for a second and looked directly at her before continuing. "Oh, and I ran in to the White Rabbit on my way here. Said he needed to see a man about a clock...never did understand rabbits. Or humans for that matter-Sarah, are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

"What?" She smiled faintly. "Oh, of course I am."

"And Planet Earth is a giant amoeba," he muttered to himself.

"Yes, well, that wouldn't surprise me, given the things that happen around here."

For the first time since he had arrived, the Doctor stopped and really looked at her. "Sarah..." he began gently.

She looked away. "Don't."

"No, Sarah, listen to me." His hand reached out and lifted her chin until she was looking at him. "Come with me."

"I- No, I can't. Doctor, I have work to do here! I can't just swan off around the universe again."

"Just one trip..." She had to smile, because he had always promised her that: just one more trip and then he'd take her home.

So she smiled again, this time with more conviction, and hugged him. "Where are we off to then?"


	2. One Door Closes

She'd forgotten what it was like, the first landing on a planet. The thrill of the unknown, fear even, tingling up and down her spine; the anticipation.

"So, Sarah. Shall we?" Her Doctor - she had always thought of him as that - held out his arm expectantly.

She hesitated, looking from him to the closed doors and back again. "Where are we?"

"Oh...I don't know! Only way to find out is to find out, eh?" He reached over to the console and flicked the door switch, and Sarah Jane suddenly felt as if the years separating her from the last time she'd walked out of those doors had vanished, evaporated in the heat of his infectious enthusiasm. She stepped confidently towards the exit, curious and ready - well, almost ready - to see where she'd been brought this time.

* * *

><p><em>He watches her. She's grown up, his little Sarah Jane, grown up so much since he saw her last that he wonders if he did the right thing by leaving her. There's sadness in her eyes, sadness and a tired fear that he knows well. He's always known she was strong, but this...this is different. And he feels somehow responsible for it, and therefore somehow responsible for bringing the smile back in to her eyes.<em>

_She steps towards the doors, curiosity winning over her obvious apprehension, and she looks so much the same that he almost forgets that over 30 years have passed for her. Did she think he'd abandoned her? Surely she knew he would never do that - not to her._

_She walks outside._

* * *

><p>For a minute, she was so glad that they hadn't landed in another blinking quarry that her surroundings didn't quite register.<p>

It was a world away from Bannerman Road, and she nearly laughed at the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing.

The sky was dark blue, edged with purple in places. No visible light source, thought her journalist's brain: that's weird. They'd landed on top of a cliff, the dizzyingly sheer drop about six feet in front of her ending in transparent water that extended all the way to the horizon.

But stranger than that - curioser and curiouser, she thought absently - was the door.

"Sarah," came the Doctor's amused voice from behind her, "why is there a door hanging in mid-air?"

As if she knew. Gingerly, she crept closer to the edge of the cliff and peered at the door. It was wooden, polished and lacquered and boasting an impressive knocker in the shape of a dragon's head which looked like it was made of bronze.

"Doctor...this can't be possible. The laws of physics...surely..."

"Oh, come on!" He seemed to thrive off impossibility, her Doctor. It was his fuel. "All good laws have exceptions!"

"Okay...so there's a door in the sky."

"Indeed. And what are doors for, Sarah Jane Smith?" he asked gleefully. He'd found himself another puzzle, she realised, and he intended to solve it.

She stepped back, away from the cliff edge, and backed towards the TARDIS. "Oh no, Doctor. No you don't. Not again, not this time." She was panicking, she knew, over-reacting completely. Hell, she trusted him with her life. With more than her life - with her heart and soul - but this, right now, she couldn't do.

* * *

><p><em>She's scared.<em>

_Sarah Jane Smith is scared._

_He's uncertain now, wonders what has happened since he left her, but her fear is real and he can see her shaking as she leans against the TARDIS. Seeing Sarah like this worries him: she was always so strong, before._

_"Sarah?" he says, stepping towards her. "Sarah, it's me, it's safe."_

_He doesn't know what to say, not really. This regeneration has never really been able to talk about feelings and suchlike very well. So he's surprised when she moves tentatively towards him and puts her arms around him; he can hear her crying softly against his shoulder._

_"I still can't believe it's you," she says, her voice muffled against his coat. "I missed you, and I waited for you for so long...and now I'm acting like a child."_

_"Oh, Sarah, I would never think that. Now, tell me all about it."_

_He thinks she's about to say something important but suddenly her breath draws in sharply and she stiffens against him. "Doctor," she whispers, "the door..."_

_He glances around to check but finds that he has no words of reassurance._

_The door is opening, and through the slowly widening crack he can see something that is definitely not blue sky._

_"Open sesame," he mutters to himself._


	3. But Who Knows Where, Or When?

Sarah Jane pulled away from the Doctor and stared apprehensively at the door. It was so ridiculous she could almost have laughed, were it not for the all-too-real creak of unoiled hinges and the light tap-tap of the swaying dragon's head knocker.

"Doctor...shouldn't we get back in the TARDIS?"

"Nonsense." He was still, for once, simply watching and immersing himself in the event, his keen and intelligent eyes seeing everything. "It's perfectly safe, Sarah Jane."

She'd have believed her first Doctor when he said that - maybe - but she'd been dragged in to too many dangerous situations with exactly those words that she just rolled her eyes and moved to stand beside him. Surely there was something terrible on the other side of that door...something just waiting to capture and devour them...something that belonged in nightmares, somehow escaped in to her world of day. Maybe this time it would be too strong for the Doctor. After all, everything dies, eventually: why should a Timelord be any different?

And then she looked up.

The door was open, and through it she could see the vague outlines of buildings in darkness, topped by a sky in which the stars seemed cold and dim. It seemed suddenly colder, as if the night breeze was blowing out of the door and on to the sun-drenched clifftop, leeching away the warmth.

She turned to the Doctor, and to her own surprise found herself smiling. "Shall we then?"

"Great minds think alike," came his delighted reply. "Although I think we'll have to jump..."

Dammit, she hated heights. To be fair, being dangled from the top of a rocket on Skaro hadn't really given her the best experience to look back on; neither had the journey to Rassilon's tower on a zip-wire. But the Doctor was already over, his long legs making it easy, and reaching out a hand to help her across. With a deep breath, she walked to the edge of the cliff. Don't look down, she told herself. If you don't look down it's not there.

And then she jumped.

* * *

><p><em>Now, this is more like the Sarah Jane he remembers. He's seen that brave, determined look on her face so many times before as she followed him in to the unknown that it seems almost normal. As she jumps across the gap separating cliff and door, he finds himself smiling. "Well done, Sarah."<em>

_She smiles back, and he sees then, in that smile, that she hasn't really changed at all. Which is strange, because most humans he has travelled with have gotten old, let age sap their strength and vitality. But Sarah...somehow, inside, she has remained the bright, inquisitive journalist she always was, and although he has been trying to return to her what must be twenty years in her past, he is strangely happy to have found her now._

_They step together away from the door and in to the darkness._

* * *

><p>The darkness wasn't a problem. It was more grey than black, thick shadows obscuring the ends of roads and tops of houses.<p>

"Do you recognise it?" Sarah whispered, clutching the Doctor's arm to avoid tripping over the cobbles underfoot.

"Recognise it? I can hardly see it!"

"It's just..." She paused as they passed a signpost, peered at it in the gloom. "It looks awfully like Earth."

"You humans think everything looks like Earth. Now come on!" He was about to dart off down an alleyway, but she tugged at his arm.

"No, Doctor, I think this _is_ Earth. London. I just saw a signpost that said Piccadilly."

He looked quizzically down at her and then at the sign, rusty with mist and rain and nailed roughly to the brick wall. "You know, you may be right." And then he was off again, marching purposefully down the alleyway and in to the darkness. Sarah had to run to catch up.

"You know," she began, "the world was awfully...dark...for a while. I thought you were dead."

"Oh, you know me. Indestructible."

"No, really. I thought...there must be a reason you didn't come back for me. Something I'd done; something gone wrong; maybe you just didn't care."

This time he stopped. "Oh, Sarah, I care." He said it so gently that tears welled up in her eyes;

she brushed them away with a touch of annoyance. She'd cried enough.

"It's just...I met you. I mean, not you, a future you, so I can't really tell you anything - but you were so distant, so different, I thought maybe I'd just been...another one in a long line...not worth coming back for." She wouldn't cry. She hadn't cried when he'd left her, or when she'd been hypnotised, or possessed, or experimented on, and she'd be damned if she was going to cry over old history. Especially not in a dark alleyway.

* * *

><p><em>It's dark, and the damp walls either side of them seem oppressive in the gloom. Or maybe that's just his sense of melodrama playing up again.<em>

_So this is what has been troubling her - some of it, anyway. She feels abandoned, worthless and forgotten and he - or rather, his future self - hasn't been able to completely reassure her of the truth. This is what hides behind her smile, lurks in her eyes. This is what he's done, with his clumsy piloting of the TARDIS. If only he'd landed in the right time._

_All this goes through his mind on the second before he speaks, and as usual the words tumble out before he can arrange them to his satisfaction. It's so much easier in his head._

_"I care about everyone I travel with, Sarah. Some more than others, admittedly, but then some of them don't really like me all that much either, but I wouldn't abandon even them." He pauses for breath. "I'm not saying this very well, Sarah. What I mean is I never meant to leave you for so long, it's just that infernal machine still can't quite manage precision landings and...oh, I'm sorry, Sarah."_

_He stops, aware of his verbal shortcomings when it comes to reassuring and comforting people, and looks at her. He speaks slowly, deliberately, determined to say the right thing this time. "I care about you, Sarah, never doubt that. And whatever face I wear I will always care about you. You were brilliant."_

_And in the mist and the darkness, in some unknown time, he watches the doubt lift from her face, leaving a smile so brilliant that he is surprised when the fog doesn't evaporate in its presence. He takes her hand. "So come on, let's find out where and when we are."_

_They're just coming out of the other end of the alley when a stern voice echoes from the darkness. A stern voice with a distinctly cockney accent. "Sir, may I ask exactly what that young lady and yourself were doing down that there alley? It's past time decent folks were home - and excuse me ma'am, but your manner of dress is most inappropriate."_

_They both stand there in stunned silence._

_"I don't mean to be rude, sir." The voice coalesces in to the distinctive form of a policeman. "It's just women are going missing. There's talk of the Ripper back at work - I'd take your missus home at once if I was you."_

_"She's not-" the Doctor begins, but thinks the better of it. "Thank you, sir. We'll be heading home now."_

_And then a whistle blows, and the policeman starts running towards the sound._

_"Come on, Doctor." Sarah is still clutching his hand. "Aren't you curious?"_

_And off they run._


	4. A Strange Encounter

Just a note to say that the rest of this will be coming at a slower pace because this is as far as I've got in the writing process so far!

* * *

><p>It was a river that greeted them, winding its sullen way through the darkness to deposit its treasures on an unused landing pier. Guarding the prize was another helmeted policeman, grim-faced and all but indistinguishable from the man they'd been talking to minutes ago.<p>

"What happened here?" the Doctor asked, pulling his usual authority around him like a cloak.

"Body, sir, from the river. It don't look natural to me, what with the...er, the gnawing, sir." The policeman looked vaguely embarrassed at the improbability of it, but the Doctor was already kneeling next to the bloated corpse. "I see what you mean. The teeth marks...look rodent...but they're far too large for that."

"I couldn't say, sir. But it's unnatural, what with this being the third body an' all. And them women goin' missing too. I don't like it, not one bit."

"Hmm." The Doctor stood again, chucking the end of his scarf over one shoulder, and glanced over at Sarah. "What do you say, Sarah?"

She stepped closer, forcing herself to study the body with care. "You're right about the teeth marks," she said eventually. "I suppose we're a hundred years early for forensics."

"Oh, the eye tells a lot more than you would think," the Doctor said. "For example..." He bent down, brushed what looked to be a length of stiff string from underneath the tattered clothes and frowned to himself. His eyes flicked up to the policeman. "I think you should get this chap to the nearest mortuary. Have someone look at him."

"Don't see as why not," said the Constable. "Last one went to Professor Litefoot, far as I remember - I'll send this one to join 'im."

"Thank you." Standing again, the Doctor laid a hand on Sarah's shoulder. "I need you to go to the mortuary."

"What about you?"

* * *

><p><em>He sees nothing but curiosity in her eyes and wonders at her fearlessness. She's always been brave but there was a time when her eyes would have screamed worry and concern, and he would have smiled and told her not to be silly, of course he'd be fine. Now he sighs. "I'm beginning to wonder why we're here."<em>

_She connects the dots with familiar lightning speed. "You think someone put that door there on purpose."_

_"The thought had crossed my mind."_

_Sarah's eyes sparkle. "Alright, Doctor. I'll tackle the pathologist, you go chase the kind of people who like to put doors in mid-air."_

_"Well, it's a hobby, of sorts," he says with deliberate cheer. "Probably an accident."_

_He notices the moment the sparkle leaves her eyes. "Doctor...how will you get back? You said it yourself: the TARDIS isn't good at precision landings. How do you know you're not going to strand me here for the rest of my life? How do you-"_

_He interrupts her with a finger to her lips. The policeman is staring at them. "I'm not going through any doors, Sarah," he reassures her. "Not without you."_

_"Forgive me if I'm not entirely confident in your abilities."_

_"You wound me."_

_She rolls her eyes and he knows everything's okay._

* * *

><p>The heavy fog was, oddly enough, more comforting than disquieting. It hung like clouds dropped to street-level, obscuring the upper windows of the taller houses and turning the gloom in to something altogether more atmospheric.<p>

It was only a short carriage journey to what was obviously the pathologist's laboratory. Sarah hesitated to call it a lab, really: from the outside it was little more than a grubby house, squashed between two equally downtrodden buildings. With a quick smile to the cabbie she stepped out of the carriage and across the pavement. She was just about to reach for the door when it was opened from the other side and a young lady walked out on to the street, casting her eyes warily around before settling her gaze on Sarah. She cocked her head to one side and considered her carefully. "You are dressed strangely," was all she said.

"I've travelled a long way," Sarah replied, a little nonplussed by the abrupt greeting. She'd assumed

that the era warranted a little more decorum.

"You are looking for the Professor?"

"The Professor? Oh, you mean the pathologist. Professor Litefoot, I think - yes, I'm looking for him. I'm meant to be getting his opinion on a body."

The strange woman didn't seem disconcerted by that statement. Instead she smiled an oddly appreciative smile. "He is not busy."

"Um...thank you."

She was about to open the door when the other woman started and shrank back against the wall. "Do not move," she hissed. "There is something coming!"

Confused, Sarah let herself be pulled against the wall and peered down the street in to the fog. "I don't see anything!"

"There was a man watching us. He was not behaving according to the accepted rules of this society." She leaned forward a little, concentration on her face. "But he has gone."

Sarah relaxed and fixed her companion with a knowing look. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"I do not understand the customs of this place. Should I have introduced myself?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm not exactly up with the times." She held out a hand. "I'm Sarah Jane Smith."

The woman grasped it with surprising firmness. "I am Leela," she said. "Leela of the Sevateem."


End file.
